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Windows 7 Way Smarter With Graphics RAM
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New Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 drivers save you RAM
In an earlier article, we described an advancement that the Windows 7 team made with desktop graphics by allowing more than one application to access the GDI (graphics device interface) stack at a time.
Allowing for more parallelism in the GDI will noticeably make things more responsive, but that wasn’t the only evolution that the software team made for the new OS. Windows 7 will now be more efficient in its use of RAM, which will have the positive effect of making everything run smoother – particularly on systems with shared graphics memory.
In Windows Vista, the more application windows you had open, the more memory required. Every window accounts for two memory allocations – one in video memory and one in system memory – which hold identical content.
The DWM (desktop window manager) is responsible for drawing the desktop with the GPU, which obviously requires the application window data in video memory. The same application window data is duplicated again in system RAM for the CPU to render independent of graphics hardware. This was inefficient obviously because of data redundancy.
Windows 7 changes this by getting rid of the system memory copy entirely, which effectively cuts the memory consumed in half. Unlike the changes to the GDI stack detailed earlier, this new memory-saving behavior requires new drivers.
“We achieved the reduction in system memory by accelerating the common GDI operations through the graphics hardware - the WDDM drivers accelerate these to minimize the performance impact of the CPU read-back of video memory,” explained Ameet Chitre, a program manager on Microsoft’s Desktop Graphics feature team. “Since you save a lot of system memory, the paging activity gets reduced – as a result, your system responsiveness improves for the same workload.”
The new drivers that support the memory-saving change are designated WDDM 1.1. Older Windows Vista WDDM 1.0 drivers will still work fine with Windows 7, but do not take advantage of the new feature.
This change positively impacts real-world usability, but benchmarks may show a degradation in performance since the CPU has to fetch data from video RAM.
“The elimination of the duplicate system memory copies which ‘speed up’ certain operations introduced slightly reduced performance as the CPU now has to read data back from the video memory. An analysis of real-world application statistics showed that these operations were rare,” Chitre said. “Our observation has been that these slow-downs do not impact the end-user functionality directly and that the memory savings directly result in Windows 7 being much responsive overall. The improvements overall are definitely noticeable on memory constrained PCs with shared memory graphics.”
The close-to-completion Windows 7 is nearly upon us. We learned on Saturday that the Release Candidate will be hitting MSDN and TechNet subscribers on April 30 with the public getting their Windows 7 RC download links on May 5.
Source : Tom's Hardware US
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Good to see Microsoft doing things to optimize code. Now, could we please have a multi threaded OS?
I have a Radeon HD 3870 X2 with 1GB or video RAM and 8GB of system memory. I clearly don't use shared video memory and my GPU is never starved of memory either. Would it be wiser to stick with WDDM1.0 scheme in that case? And then use WDDM1.1 for my HTPC with an intergrated Radeon HD3200?
...Or would I even notice a difference on either system using either 1.0 or 1.1?
man win 7 keeps getting better and better!
Sounds good to me.
yeah, it's clear that they are DOING...
everyday, it becomes more interesting for me
more efficiency... more development... more...
wow this is amazing news, i cant wait for the rc.
I have a Radeon HD 3870 X2 with 1GB or video RAM and 8GB of system memory. I clearly don't use shared video memory and my GPU is never starved of memory either. Would it be wiser to stick with WDDM1.0 scheme in that case? And then use WDDM1.1 for my HTPC with an intergrated Radeon HD3200?...Or would I even notice a difference on either system using either 1.0 or 1.1?
you want to use 1.1 and take full advantage of windows 7 change. this is amazing, right now your graphics card memory is not directly used, instead windows writes to your ram memory and they are synced. this takes time, what microsoft is doing is directly writing to your video cards memory, saving the overhead of keeping the two synced. this is amazing and everyone should try to move over, baring problems...
See, this is how they avoid "perception problems" like in Vista, have the news constantly flood you with puff pieces on what a great OS this is, and thus, rumors that it doesn't suck spread like wildfire. This is why it's a new OS rather than Vista SP2.5, even though it's based on Vista. I hope it lives up to the hype, but don't let them "market" it to you like Apple does.
Good to see Microsoft doing things to optimize code. Now, could we please have a multi threaded OS?
ummm.... Windows is multithreaded. has been for a while.
See, this is how they avoid "perception problems" like in Vista, have the news constantly flood you with puff pieces on what a great OS this is, and thus, rumors that it doesn't suck spread like wildfire. This is why it's a new OS rather than Vista SP2.5, even though it's based on Vista. I hope it lives up to the hype, but don't let them "market" it to you like Apple does.
They're not "rumors". I have been using the Betas for a while now on many different plataforms and I can tell u Windows 7 is excellent.
*begins to salivate over a new piece of technology*
I feel..... nerdy...
SkepticalSkeptic
no need to market it to most people as they are using the beta/RC and can see that its a very solid product
nice, i actually want to switch to win7(i'll get it for free since i'm a computer science major at my college)
This advancement alone will definitely help Windows 7 appeal especially to those buying a low priced model from a PC manufacturer such as eMachines or Compaq. The biggest complaint with shared memory was slowdowns caused by this exact scenario.
What?! Does this mean that my 6gigs of memory won't ever be used, and I'll also have a performance hit? If so, I'm going Linux >.> I needed memory in my old PC, so I bought a new one altogether. Now, MS is telling me I didn't have to buy a new PC, and my attempts at future-proofing myself were a complete fail?
I feel..... nerdy...
don't we all
ummm.... Windows is multithreaded. has been for a while.
Windows is as "multi-threaded" as games.
*begins to salivate over a new piece of technology*I feel..... nerdy...
There's probably a reason for that
I agree with other posts. Windows 7 IS looking awesome.... I just wished it looked EXACTLY like Windows XP. I've used it for 8 years, and don't really ever wanna switch lol. DX10/11 and 64-bit on Windows 7 Ultimate would be the best thing ever
I have 8GB of system ram and 1GB video ram on my 4850. I see no reason why this wouldn’t be enough for Win7.
Windows is as "multi-threaded" as games.
Play 1080p file with XP and Vista x64 and you'll see the difference.
FINALLY!!
Vista is terrible because it uses SO MUCH of my RAM while XP I have TONS of it available. And this ain't no shitty RAM, this is Corsair XMS2 2GB Dual Channel PC-6400 RAM.
FINALLY!!Vista is terrible because it uses SO MUCH of my RAM while XP I have TONS of it available. And this ain't no shitty RAM, this is Corsair XMS2 2GB Dual Channel PC-6400 RAM.
Congratulations. You now have over 1GB of XMS2 DDR800 idling empty instead of boosting your graphics, performance, and security.
Yay for XP! =)
FINALLY!!Vista is terrible because it uses SO MUCH of my RAM while XP I have TONS of it available. And this ain't no shitty RAM, this is Corsair XMS2 2GB Dual Channel PC-6400 RAM.
Actually that is old RAM and besides, don't you realise that 2GB ram isn't enough these days? You aren't even in the enthusiast space without having at least 4GB and crying not enough memory is a cop out because the ram you have can be gotten in 8gb quantities for less than $120 USD. RAM has been a quantity over quality product since ddr2 was introduced.
If it actually translates into something efficient (Vista is'nt on this matter, even though they promised it would), it would be pretty cool. Vista is stable, good looking and secure. But it is really badly optimised. Still, it got better with SP1 and following updates.
I think this is a great step for Microsoft to create a better and more efficient OS, but I still want see some benchmarks how this will impact performance.
looks like MIT grads are working on win7 and highschool jocks developed vista.
kinda looks as though microsoft knowingly thru vista to the masses with all its faults, and us (the masses) wanting the next best thing bought into this fraud. microsoft did come out with win7 very fast and yes im 1 of the millions that upgraded to vista then upgraded back to xp.
im glad that microsoft at least is goin to make up for their mistake.
think they ll give anyone with a proof of purchase for vista a discount if they send it in? lol
See, this is how they avoid "perception problems" like in Vista, have the news constantly flood you with puff pieces on what a great OS this is, and thus, rumors that it doesn't suck spread like wildfire. This is why it's a new OS rather than Vista SP2.5, even though it's based on Vista. I hope it lives up to the hype, but don't let them "market" it to you like Apple does.
Woah, woah, woah.
Apple prays on ignorant consumers with subjective comparisons and outright lies. Microsoft is reporting on objective technical features they've added to their operating system. Ignorant consumers aren't even going to understand, much less be swayed by such reports.
and yes im 1 of the millions that upgraded to vista then upgraded back to xp.
That's not the kind of thing you should admit on a blog where people tend to actually know stuff...
That did it! I give up. I'll upgrade to win7 x64 FTW!
Surely MS off-loaded shadow video RAM ages ago, with a Hotfix to Vista (now incorporated in SP1)? See this KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105
I quote:
"With the introduction of DirectX 10 and Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) in Windows Vista, it is no longer necessary for an application to maintain a copy of its resources in system memory. Instead, the video memory manager makes sure that the content of every video memory allocation is maintained across display transitions. For compatibility reasons, Windows Vista emulates "device lost" for DirectX versions that are earlier than DirectX 10 to make sure that no application-visible API behavior changes."
It sounds to me as if MS are spinning Windows 7 by comparing it with Vista RTM rather than Vista as "mended" by the hotfix and/or SP1.
There is a danger that this and other websites have become un-moderated conduits for the manufacturers to promote their marketing spin. So I hope the issue will be looked into. And if it turns out that MS is just re-spinning an existing technology, I hope that Tom's will point it out in forceful terms.
Here's a thought.... how about not making bloatware that gobbles up memory like there's not tomorrow - then you wouldn't need this "advancement". The explosion in memory consumption by the Window OS over the last few generation is a large part of why this is being touted as a good thing.
While the change seems good, if everything was written to use memory more efficiently in the first place then removing this redundancy would not be a big deal. I am curious whether it is 'only benchmarks' that are potentially slowed down as the CPU now has to get the data from the GPU memory.